Dec. 26, Last official club tennis practice of 2018.

December 26, Wednesday.  Tennis + Tri-Challenges.

Today, was a rainy day pretty much all morning.  But fortunately, the rain let up around noon and the sun peeped out from behind the mostly cloudy skies.  So, since it was not raining heavily, the practice went on as scheduled.  However, we had practice at a new park that I had never been to.  Getting directions was a little tough, but once I understood where it was, I was fine.

The new courts were still kind of wet and had puddles all over them so the first 15-20 minutes, we squeegeed the surface as best we could, but there were still wet spots that caused the ball to skid instead of bounce.  Plus, the lights were a lot dimmer than normal court lights so it was really difficult to see the ball.  Everyone was missing easy shots, and timing due to skidding was causing problems all over the place.  But that forced us all to focus even harder and we were really zoning in on the ball.  We eventually started to get the hang of playing through these conditions.  Another thing about tonight was the fact that we had two courts and only 9 members showed up.  So we were pretty much moving the whole night with virtually no rest.  The menu was the same for the first two drills, Stroke/Volley and Service/Return in a double court rotation.  But in the last 45 minutes, we did something a little different.  Still using the double court rotation, one court was doing the regular Game-sim, and the other court was doing a game-sim but starting with an actual serve, but only from one side, The Deuce side, then after one rotation, we switched sides to the Ad side.  For me, it was a lot of fun and I hit some really good shots, but of course, I shanked some points as well.  But I was really playing well against certain players and junk against others.  I still have a weak mental game, probably stemming from a lack of confidence and experience.  I'll have to keep playing to get over that weakness.  It was a good practice, albeit on a pretty cold night.  I was wearing a warm pullover jacket that I needed to remove after warming up, but put back on when the wind started picking up.  It just got too chilly.

When I got home, I did the TRI-Challenges and that was it.

In the end, I burned a good 1609 kcals.  This was for around 90 minutes of play, so I was happy with that number.